“You wait decades for a city to get a world-class concert hall and two come along at once,” writes Rowan Moore in Sunday’s (2/9) Guardian (U.K.). “Last month plans were revealed for the Centre for Music in the City of London by the New York architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro. But there is now another project to build a 1,250-seat venue in the suburb better known for its tennis—Wimbledon—to be designed by the celebrated Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry. The plan is driven by Anthony Wilkinson, founder and director of the annual Wimbledon international music festival, which in the past 10 years has hosted around 200 concerts, held mostly in local churches…. Gehry … and Wilkinson are keen to stress that the two new concert halls are complementary, not rivals…. As well as the main hall it is to have a 300-seat flexible space. The complex is to be ‘multi-genre.’ … The intended site is the Hartfield Road car park in the town center.… After visiting Gehry’s building for the New World Symphony in Miami, [Wilkinson] wrote to the architect about the Wimbledon project. Gehry phoned him back. ‘I’ve always wanted to do a concert hall in London,’ Wilkinson recalled him saying.”
Posted February 13, 2019
